Human-Centered Technologies for a Safer and Greener European Construction Industry
Proposal number: 101058236
Proposal acronym: HumanTech
Duration: 3 years (36 months) (June 2022 – 31 May 2025)
Total Project Budget: €9,146,103.00 TUS Project Budget: €298,550.00
Funder: European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA)
Type of Model Grant Agreement: Horizon Research and Innovation Actions
HORIZON-CL4-2021-TWIN-TRANSITION-01
Summary:
The European construction industry faces three major challenges: Improve its productivity, increase the safety and well-being of its workforce, and shift towards a green, resource-efficient industry. To address these challenges adequately, HumanTech is a human-centered approach, involving breakthrough technologies such as wearables for worker safety and support, and intelligent robotic technology that can harmoniously co-exist with human workers while also contributing to the green transition of the industry. We aim to achieve major advances beyond the current state-of-the-art in all these technologies, that can have a disruptive effect on the way construction is conducted by a new generation of highly skilled, male and female construction workers and engineers, working in a safe and rewarding digitally enabled environment. These advances will include the introduction of robotic devices equipped with vision and intelligence to enable them to navigate autonomously and safely in a highly unstructured environment, collaborate with humans, and dynamically update a semantic digital twin of the construction site. Visual information capturing will extend to multispectral imaging enabling detection of material composition of built structures besides geometric characteristics. Intelligent unobtrusive workers protection and support equipment ranging from exoskeletons triggered by wearable body pose and strain sensors, to wearable cameras and XR glasses to provide real-time worker localization and guidance for the efficient and accurate fulfillment of their tasks. An entirely new breed of Dynamic Semantic Digital Twins (DSDTs) of construction sites simulating in detail the current state of a construction site at the geometric and semantic level, based on an extended BIM formulation encompassing all relevant structural and semantic dimensions (BIMxD). BIMxDs will act as a common reference for all human workers, engineers, and autonomous machines. At HumanTech, we develop innovative, human-centered technologies that go beyond the current state of the art. With them, we strive to contribute to the digitalization of the construction industry, making it safer and more productive, encouraging a new generation of highly skilled professionals, and accelerating the transition to green construction.
Partners:
Our team brings together highly acclaimed SMEs and large companies, organizations that represent the interests of end users, and a diverse selection of construction groups from across Europe.
We are characterized by multidisciplinarity, complementarity of knowledge and objectives, and an excellent track record in research and development projects. Led by the German Institute for Artificial Intelligence DFKI German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (dfki.de) HumanTech has 21 partners from 10 countries.
Areas of expertise:
· Artificial intelligence and data management
· Robotics and drones
· Exoskeletons and wearables
· Extended reality combined with state-of-the-art research and domain knowledge in digital construction
· Vocational training
· Human factors
· Marketing and dissemination
To learn more: Team – Humantech Horizon (humantech-horizon.eu)
YouTube: (3) HumanTech EU – YouTube
TUS Activities (Development Unit):
Modular micro-learning units on technologies for workers’ safety, well-being, and human-robot collaboration in construction, are to be used as open educational resources.
10 training sessions with 200 participants and 1 ‘Train the Trainer’ session for 20 educators and trainers.
WP 6 lead – Human Factors, Training, and Usability Assessment
For further information: Project Support Officer: Gloria Callinan Email: gloria.callinan@tus.ie
Project WebsiteProject Factsheet